Poeppel Corner Trip

I'm considering a trip to Poeppels Corner sometime in 2012 or 2013 and am wondering if there's any interest out there from others?

The planning is still in its very very early stages.

Anyone interested?

As the crow flies, it's about 130km from Birdsville and we'll be there from 30Aug through to 2nd September 2012. I notice that Haddon Corner is dinstinctly further away and harder to get to.

If there's a decent track from Birdsville out there then we can do it after the races. If necessary, we could leave our vans at Birdsville and just do the run in the Navaras on the Sunday, letting the crowds disperse, then we go back to Birdsville, pick up our trailers and head home after the madness has subsided.

Old.Tony said:

As the crow flies, it's about 130km from Birdsville and we'll be there from 30Aug through to 2nd September 2012. I notice that Haddon Corner is dinstinctly further away and harder to get to.

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not true. Getting to haddon corner is a very simple track. Well signed and as long as its been graded. Excellent surface. To give you and idea, it was graded 2 weeks or so before we drove on it and we could very comfortable sit on 100k/h on both the track to haddon and the Birdsville track.

Poeppel corner is a different story. To get to that you've got to enter the Simpson desert proper. So all your usual desert crossing preparations would need to be employed.

I'm not trying to have an argument. I used terms like "if there's a good road", so "not true" turns out to be right, but painting it up the front like an attack just makes everyone uncomfortable especially when I made it clear that I didn't know what it was like.

Okay, so there's desert between Birdsville and Poeppel Corner? I'm not doing that with the van on the back. What about leaving the vans behind and doing it as a day trip?

If the road to Haddon Corner is good, could we go back that way and find our way down to White Cliffs or Broken Hill?

Old.Tony said:

Okay, so there's desert between Birdsville and Poeppel Corner? I'm not doing that with the van on the back. What about leaving the vans behind and doing it as a day trip?

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I remember a few write ups on various forums about doing it as day trip, so feasible. If I remember correctly, it involves a few dunes as well.

I wonder if the caravan park owner @ Birdsville will let us move our campers in there for the trip. Sounds like a big day if there are dunes involved.

I tried following one of the tracks out there via Google Earth and it disappeared into the sands after about 50km or so.

So we would need to take a long-handled shovel, maxx trax, air compressor, full fuel tanks and about 20 litres of water for a day trip? Could we cover that - and return - in a day?

30kph is a general average when travelling desert tracks.

So we're talking about 80km of desert each way = 160km /30 = about 5 (say 6) hours of travel total, plus lunch + photos ... we could leave at 8am be there by 11:30ish, put on the charcoal bbq, have lunch and be back in time to catch the evening news.

Even if the entire 130km was desert it's about 4 hours' travel each way.

Sorry tony, I can be quite abrupt in my forum posting which comes off as quite rude, it certainly sounds like a fairly good plan, you won't get caravans out to poeppel corner. Stock road caravans might have some trouble getting to haddon corner. There is some small dunes to cross, it's much like driving through bulldust lathes, very firm base with fine loose sand ontop.

Personally I'd plan for an overnight stay at poeppel corner. No point in rushing a trip into the desert. The weather is going to be the biggest hurdle in getting out there. Especially if they're predicting another big rainy summer.

Good Lord, I'm not taking my big tent with us, no way. At that time of year we'll have daylight in Birdsville from about 6:55am to 6:30pm (see Birdsville Sunrise / Sunset, QLD 4482 - WillyWeather.com.au for info) so not quite 12 hours' worth of daylight. With 2 hours for lunch, photos and watching Scotty do circle work around the corner marker that leaves us 10 hours for travelling.

I could be tempted to take a smaller tent. I have a 4-person - not large enough - and might just get a cheap 6-man tent for this sort of trip.

Are snakes an issue out there?

Unsure about snakes. We didn't see any on our trek in July, but this'll be at about the time when they'll be getting active so I'd plan for a yes on the snakes. I'll be taking my swag and that's about all as far as sleeping arrangements go.

My plan would be to do the races on Friday and Saturday, allow a 2 day trip to the corner and back (camping in the desert is pretty awesome!) be back in Birdsville on the Monday, then head off down towards haddon corner and innaminka try and do Cameron's corner while we're at it. Arkaroola and flinders ranges maybe, then head back to brissy via broken hill, dubbo, etc.

My very initial planning, and I am not very far at all with this was thinking of aiming for Longreach and on the way back down, hitting Poeppel Corner, Birdsville and Cameron Corner and from there I haven't decided yet, I may head east and up a bit to Charleville and Cunnamulla on the way back. It's all up in the air.

I was thinking of maybe up to around 500k's of desert driving.

It'll be swags for us and setup for complete self reliance.

500 k's of desert driving? It's only 540kms across the Simpson...

Who mentioned the Simpson?

Big red is on the very edge of the Simpson desert. Poeppel corner is well into the Simpson desert. So if you're planning on doing 500k's of desert driving, you may as well do a bit more and cross the thing?

If we were keen enough we could do the races, followed by all three corners. I'm not sure I'm up for that, I think I'll draw the line at Poeppel and back to Birdsville then home.

There seem to be reasonable roads around Cameron Corner and one leads to Tibooburra. If we could get our caravan there, we could do Birdsville->Poeppel->Birdsville without the van, then Birdsville->Haddon->Cameron->Tibooburra with the van. It might be possible - I'll have to look more closely at this, and how long the trip would take. I do have to get back to work after the trip!

Right, here is some info from the web for starters.

Simpson Desert: - Birdsville, Big Red and west to Poeppels Corner. @ ExplorOz Blogs

Poeppel Corner SA @ ExplorOz Places

Birdsville to Poeppel Corner @ ExplorOz Forum

Old.Tony said:

watching Scotty do circle work around the corner marker

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He'll need a decent lift kit to get over the fence!

Excellent links mate! It's pretty much as I expected. And you'd also have to take into account the new route out there after all the flooding as well.

So overnighter it is!